Based on Priya Kumar’s 2015 novel I Will Go With You: The Flight of a Lifetime, the ZEE5 Original series The Final Call, which premiered on 22 February 2019, revolves around the passengers of a flight from Mumbai to Sydney piloted by an former Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter pilot named Karan Sachdev, essayed by Arjun Rampal. The Final Call marks Rampal’s debut on the web. The Vijay Lalwani-directed thriller series co-stars Javed Jaffrey, Sakshi Tanwar, Neeraj Kabi, Anupriya Goenka, and Vipin Shama.So far only 4 episodes have been released on the ZEE5 platform. While the episode duration is roughly around about 40 minutes, the pacing is so taut that the narrative flows naturally and one never really thinks about the running time. The episodes offer a nice blend of drama, thrills, and suspense thanks to some brilliant acting, seamless editing, and compelling storytelling. The remaining episodes are expected to be out soon. But what is the series all about and what makes it so unique?

Now, among other things, it is the series’ premise that makes it so unique. Consider a flight from Mumbai to Sydney with 300 passengers on board. The captain of the flight, who is an ex-IAF fighter pilot, has a history of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD). In other words, he is haunted by flashbacks, nightmares and severe bouts of anxiety. It has to do with the guilt surrounding certain missions that he carried out as a fighter pilot. To make matters worse he is plagued by the tragic death of his wife and children who died in a road accident. In order to deal with the trauma, he is forced to take certain medicine to calm himself from time to time. But he is finally fed up of all this and has decided to take his life. And that too on board putting the lives of 300 passengers and the crew at stake.

If that’s not exciting enough then we also have an astrologer named Krishanmurthi who has already calculated that he will die on the flight to Sydney and yet he boards it as his belief in the cycle of life/death is beyond doubt. Kabi is brilliant as ever playing a character with deep philosophical depth that’s reminiscent of his monk character in Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus. Adding to the gamut of fascinating characters in The Final Call is a clairvoyant billionaire named Siddharth Singhaniya, played by Javed Jaffrey with his characteristic flair. Then there is Sakshi Tanwar who plays an ATC officer named Kiran Mirza. Like Sachdev, Mirza too comes from a military background. In fact, Sachdev and Mirza have a lot more in common and actually act as a mirror to one another.

Neeraj Kabi as Krishanmurthi in The Final Call

Other than a fast-paced narrative and edge of the seat thrills, The Final Call scores heavily in the acting department. Arjun Rampal who had extensive training in order to prepare for the part is the single best thing about the series. This is easily his best performance since Farhan Akhtar’s Don. He is well supported by Jaffrey, Kabi, and Tanwar. Now, it remains to be seen how the story shapes up in the upcoming episodes. Given how the story has developed so far there is little doubt that they would be any less binge-worthy. Till then you can catch the exciting episodes of The Final Call here.

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Murtaza Ali Khan is an independent film critic / journalist based out of New Delhi, India. He has been writing on cinema for over seven years. He runs the award-winning entertainment blog A Potpourri of Vestiges. He is also the Films Editor at the New York City-based publication Cafe Dissensus and regularly contributes to The Hindu and The Sunday Guardian. He was previously a columnist at Huff Post. He has also contributed to publications like DailyO, Newslaundry, The Quint, Dear Cinema, Desimartini and Jamuura Blog. He regularly appears as a guest panelist on the various television channels and is also associated with radio.